1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a computer-aided organizational design system, and particularly to a method for facilitating in assessing transitional costs in business transformations.
2. Description of Background
Organizations undertaking business transformation evolve from one organization state to another. Costs incurred during the transitions, if not properly managed, can offset the financial benefits gained or even fail the business transformation. One significant cost factor is staffing and skill requirements. This is due to the fact that transitions often lead to retraining staff, recruiting new skills, acquiring software for collaboration, etc. To ensure the financial benefits and return of investment, organizations need to estimate the transition costs in people dimension before embarking on business transformation. Software providers also need to assess the transition costs in client organizations in order to deliver solutions that enable the clients to complete the business transformation.
Methods or solutions have been considered in measuring the transition costs in such business transformations. For example, Business Process Management (BPM) emerged as a discipline when organizations were focused on business process management and improvement. There are BPM processes and tools that measure the impacts of process changes on process outcomes, system performance, resource utilization, etc., but give little consideration for how staff members will be affected in terms of the changes in skill requirements, people collaboration, task assignments, etc. As a result, these methods or solutions overlook this significant ‘hidden cost’ and cannot guarantee the business will get the desired value after the transformations.